Blood Father is at its best if you think of it as Mel “Sugar Tits” Gibson’s extension of his character from Lethal Weapon. Riggs gone to seed, still living in a trailer, but now in the high desert instead of on the coast, slightly racist but not too racist to be the lead character in a movie about an ex-con biker tattoo artist reconciling with his estranged daughter. Gibson is weathered and surprisingly beefy. There’s a lot of real estate on his arms for the fake tattoos. He’s a recovering alcoholic whose sponsor is William H. Macy. Macy’s character is a “trailer park poet” who has a trenchant analogy about sticking his thumb up his buddy’s ass. Then an action movie happens and Gisbon’s trailer gets shot up again. Oh, it’s on.
At one point the wildly bearded Gibson reconnects with his erstwhile biker pals who are still too racist to be anything but villains. The wonderful Michael Parks is the leader of the still racist bikers. Parks has a great monologue about culture co-opting subversive movements. “It happened to Hell’s Angels, it’s happening to rap,” he explains. It’s a pretty shrewd insight for a neo-Nazi biker. Who is this guy?
Then Gibson and Parks yell at each other, each wild-eyed and weathered in their own way. It should have been a golden spike between Donner and Tarantino. But Blood Father’s director, whose main claim to fame is a stylish remake of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, doesn’t quite appreciate what he’s got. Shortly thereafter, Gibson will shave, put on a suit, and reprise the role he sanitized when he seized Brian Helgeland’s Payback and recut it to assidiously scrub out the antihero. “Give me back my daughter,” he screams into the phone. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s pretty much where Blood Father goes. Exactly where you’d expect a Mel Gibson movie to go.
Elite was amazing back in the day. I mean the original wireframe one. The one out now is pretty good, too, I guess. But it hasn’t been back in the day for, oh, I don’t know, at least ten years? Maybe twenty? Vast, open, and mostly empty universes aren’t so amazing anymore. Open universes need stuff in them. They need content. They need gameplay. They need interlocking gameplay systems. They probably need to compress time and distance with some hoo-ha about hyperlight warp subspace drives. They also probably need trading, combat, faction rep, upgrades, and a story. And, these days, a game can’t very well be a game without crafting.
Because we all wanted to know what happened to Jason Statham’s character after the Mechanic remake — well, “remake” — here is a sequel that reveals all. At the 1:21-mark, we’ll flash our credentials before a discussion of badges and IDs in movies.
Quarter to Three is hosting a Twilight Struggle tournament with actual prizes donated by publisher GMT Games. As far as I’m concerned, that makes it the Official Unofficial World Championship. You might want to consider getting a sponsorship or two if you enter. Maybe Raytheon. The Project for a New American Century think tank. The Casper Weinberger Foundation. Get a T-shirt made with the various corporate logos for your sponsors, or maybe just a big picture of William Kristol on the front. There’s no reason Twilight Struggle can’t be like NASCAR.
To enter, first you should be good at Twilight Struggle. Which I am not, so you’re on your own. Second, you should own a copy of the superlative port of the seminal boardgame. Third, you should post a message in the comments section for this article. Once registration closes, further instructions will be posted and you’ll be matched with your first opponent! Good luck, comrade. I mean, fellow defender of liberty, free commerce, and whatever the Independent Reds card does.
Among today’s Steam releases are a handful of unexpected blasts from the past: Phantasmagorias 1 and 2, a couple of Gabriel Knights, a bundle of Police Quests and another of Quests for Glory, and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura. Remember when Arcanum was unique for having a steampunk aesthetic? And you can’t beat that subtitle.
Activision has been making some of their older games more readily available lately, which is probably wise because how far can you get on Call of Duty, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and Skylanders? Always have a fallback plan.
I’ve been playing the Playstation 4 re-release of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 recently, because I recall those games being great. And they still are. There’s an endearing pre-Disney obliviousness about how much you can nickel-and-dime Marvel fans, so here’s everything in one great big overflowing bag. The Avengers weren’t even a gleam in any studio’s eye and Joss Whedon was just some guy doing a silly cheerleader show. So it’s really cute that Thor isn’t yet an Australian surfer dude, Maria Hill is just another SHIELD lackey, and no one’s ever even heard of Black Widow, so she sits off to the side somewhere, entirely un-Johanssoned. Heck, the Fantastic Four weren’t even a joke yet and you could have X-Men running alongside Avengers because they hadn’t been exiled to Fox yet. Those were the days. Marvel was a free-range property that hadn’t been hooked up to the milking machine yet.
Which reminds me, does anyone want to buy a whole mess of Disney Infinity Marvel characters?
As they developed and updated Prison Architect, Introversion co-founders Chris Delay and Mark Morris regularly posted videos in which they showed off what they’re doing. They’ve got the easy rapport you’d expect from any two guys who’ve been working together for fifteen plus years. And English accents, to boot. Those videos come to a halt today. With the last update to Prison Architect, they’re signing off for the time being. But before they go, they’ll give you a look at what might be Introversion’s next game. Scanner Sombre and Wrong Wire are design prototypes that, like everything else Introversion does, is nothing like what Introversion does.
If you’re so inclined, you can vote for your favorite here. I picked the one that didn’t require any knowledge of wires and voltage.
We’re like a panel of judges dispassionately watching this critically and commercially unsuccessful comedy. At the 1:17, don’t omit listening to our favorite deleted scenes for this week’s 3×3.
If I can’t livestream boardgames, I guess I can just, well, stream them. Non-live. There’s got to be a word for that. Whatever you want to call it, here is everything you could ever want to know — and then some! — about Victory Point Games’ update and re-release of one of the best solitaire boardgames you can play.
Among Ubisoft’s Gamescom announcements was the Calling All Units DLC for Tom Chick’s Official GOTY 2014, a.k.a. The Crew:
Players will hit the road as a cop or street racer to prove their driving skills and team up in crews to take over the USA. This new police-chase fantasy will have a deep impact on the gameplay and on players experience all over the gigantic open world offered by The Crew. Players will be introduced to this brand-new police versus racer gameplay through a twelve-mission story that will allow them to build up their own cop style and tactics, ride in fully tuned police vehicles and collect new parts, vehicles and XP.
Oh, so it’s just some new multiplayer mode that forces you to wait in a lobby for a full team? In other words, something separate from what makes The Crew great: it’s open world?
In this always-on, all-terrain confrontation, each side will rely on a set of special abilities and a great variety of vehicles as they race across the US. As a member of the police, players chase street racers across the US in frantic, high-risk pursuits. They will perform successful arrests and get their hands on a wide range of exclusive cop vehicles, from exotic supercars to legendary motorbikes or indestructible SUVs, fully tuned up with police livery and light bars. Players who prefer to hit the roads as a racer will take off with cargo for heart-pounding rides and high rewards. Chases can be triggered anywhere, anytime, bringing even more intensity to the multiplayer experience, already enjoyed by more than nine million players.
“Always on”? Sounds like full-blown PvP to me. Consensual PvP. Some players carry “cargo”, some players hunt down the cargo carriers, and everyone else goes about their business.
Additionally, all The Crew players will be able to take part in this frantic face-off as they will have total access to the street racer gameplay, which includes special abilities such as blinding flashbangs and unlimited nitro. All players will also enjoy the new level cap, now set to 60.
So carrying “cargo” — c’mon, Ubisoft, just be like Rockstar and call it drugs already — is available to everyone as a new means of advancement, but only folks who buy Calling All Units get to be the law.
The release date is November 29th. Ubisoft also announced a bunch of other stuff at Gamescom, but I wasn’t really listening.
It can be difficult to go back and watch horror from the 70s and 80s. So much of that Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper stuff, so many of those Italian movies, so many of the myriad forgettable slasher films were mean-spirited and cruel. There was no creative intent behind the cruelty other than shock. It was as pointless as it was effective. Lake Nowhere is a grisly morsel that remembers this. It very nearly keeps a straight face, but it can’t help but crack its goofy Raimi smile. Not a wink, mind you. But definitely a smile.
Of course, it tips its hand early. Since Lake Nowhere barely clocks in at 40 minutes, co-directors Christopher Phelps and Maxim Von Scoy have front-loaded it with a fake commercial and trailers. The conceit is an old VHS copy taped over…well, I don’t know what it’s taped over, but it bleeds through a couple of times. My guess is the overarching story isn’t about people who go into the woods and fall prey to a masked killer. The overarching story is some kids who shot their own horror movie on a VHS camera and then years later used the tape to make a copy of a horror movie called Lake Nowhere. You’re not watching Lake Nowhere. You’re watching a physical slice of 1982.
And not the anodyne 1982 of Netflix’s Stranger Things with its running time of eight hours and its body count of one. These are the aesthetics of 70s and 80s sex and gore, these breasts, that balding forehead, this fake blood, this sickly green cinematography and grainy film stock and questionable lighting, the tracking glitches and distorted sound and popping audio. Lake Nowhere’s low-budget texture is slick filmmaking shrewdly disguised as trash. And at its heart, it is the can-do “hey, let’s go out in the woods and make a horror movie!” enthusiasm and audacity of Cunningham, Carpenter, Coscorelli, Romero, and Raimi.
The Bronze, about a woman who was an Olympic gymnast as a child, tanked critically and commercially. Not because women aren’t funny, although that’s always an argument always worth revisiting so you can watch some really funny movies (Bridesmaids, Sisters, Election, The Heat, Afternoon Delight, Enough Said, Muriel’s Wedding, Opposite of Sex, Pitch Perfect, Sightseers, Your Sister’s Sister, Death Proof, etc.). The Bronze tanked because women aren’t supposed to be a certain kind of funny. They’re not allowed to be as vulgar or unlikeable as men. It’s as if there’s a crassness threshold that women can’t cross. Call it a crass ceiling. Not even the shrewdly subversive Amy Schumer could break through it. Her Trainwreck script and performance carefully implied drunkenness, promiscuity, and assholishness without getting too far outside the confines of a traditional studio romcom.
Melissa Rauch will have none of that nonsense. Her character in The Bronze, which she wrote, is the character Danny McBride has made a career playing (Foot Fist Way) and replaying (Eastbound and Down) and replaying again (Vice Principals): a vulgar, self-centered, bitter, unpleasant idiot running roughshod over decent people. Rauch and The Bronze wallow gleefully, unrepentantly, profanely, comfortably in the same gutter. When her father — another meticulously underplayed Gary Cole performance — threatens to cut off her allowance, she barks, “If you cut off my allowance, I’m going to have to suck dicks in the CostCo bathroom for money.” But she’s not done. Where Danny McBride might lapse into inarticulate mumblecore, The Bronze’s athletic vulgarity sticks the landing. “Is that what you want, dad? You want me to suck on dirty dicks in a discount warehouse toilet?” If it wasn’t so raunchy, it would be poetic. Rauch twists her face into a mask of appalled rage to sell it. I hold up a little card that says 8.7. But she’s just getting warmed up.
Is this latest superhero boondoggle good, bad, or in between? Finally another three-way split. Thanks, David Ayer! At the 1:37 mark, check out our 3×3 about libraries.
I shouldn’t expect Aquanaut’s Holiday, but I can’t help myself. Drop me into a virtual ocean and I’m going to remember that game’s open-world wonder from a time before open-world was even a thing. It was 1995. It was a Playstation. And not a Playstation One, because there was no such thing. The Playstation 2, 3, and 4 didn’t exist yet. Just a Playstation. It was Japanese, which might explain why it didn’t feel the need to be an actual game. It was instead a virtual ocean released at a time when you couldn’t go online and Google search a forum to start a thread called “uh, what am i supposed to be doing in here anyway?” So I spent most of my time in Aquanaut’s Holiday wondering what was going to happen, if anything, and not particularly minding that nothing was happening because it was so weirdly hypnotic. Relaxing. Sometimes eerie. Years later I would discover you could build a reef to attract fish or something. I suppose that’s gameplay, but it’s nothing I ever figured out.
Paradox has been trying to tidy up some of the shortcomings of Stellaris with a series of patches named after science fiction writers. Asimov has been released and Clarke is under way. Given the work the design needs, I’m holding out for, I dunno, maybe Vonnegut? No earlier than Shatner, at any rate. But the ongoing patchwork won’t deter Paradox from selling DLC in the meantime. The first set of DLC is the Plantoids Species Pack for $8. It sounds like it might add some cool factions to a game whose factions aren’t cool, because they aren’t even factions (they’re randomly rolled sets of traits given nonsense names). So let’s take a look at what you get for your $8.
Fifteen new species portraits
New templates for plantoid civilian and military ships
New cityscape art
Oh. So, just plant artwork? Well what’s this that’s already in the base game?
Wait, those are fungoids. How could I confuse the two? Stellaris fans have already gotten the mushroom treatment.
